Meeting with Paul Burstow

Wednesday, 29 February

It's not often I blog twice in one day, but I
wanted to let you know that I met with Paul Burstow and his team
this morning. With me were William Pickering, our Public Affairs
Manager, and Professor Kam Bhui, our Lead for Public Mental Health.
We presented an Executive Summary on parity of esteem between
mental and physical health; what it’s about, and why it’s so
important. We also presented the start of a longer document with
worked case examples, that Chairs of the Faculties have helpfully
provided for us. They seem impressed with this work, and we are
committed to working with the government in England, and I guess
the same would definitely apply across the UK, for furthering a
proper understanding of parity of esteem, the lives of our users of
services, but also to improve the mental health of those with
physical illness.

We have been working on a refined amendment to
the Health and Social Care Bill to ensure parity of esteem for
mental and physical health and are hoping the government will
support the proposal when the Bill returns to the Commons. I do
hope they will, as this would be some positive proof to all the
members of the College that the government and the coalition was
serious about mental health services, and how they need to be
protected for the sake of our users.

As Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg himself
said earlier today, while announcing funding for a children’s
mental health programme, "Mental health must have the same priority
as physical health".

Yesterday, I had a really good meeting with
Profsesor Cornelius Katona and colleagues from the legal
profession, around asylum seekers and immigration. Our particular
ongoing concerns are about the conditions in which asylum
seekers are kept, and still them not being truly able to access
good mental health assessments, when clearly so many of them have
mental health problems and/or learning disability.

Cornelius has kindly offered to bring together
all the work that's been done over the last few years about
immigration and asylum seekers, and will be giving a presentation
at the next meeting of College Council. I hope you would agree that
we need somebody such as Cornelius to drive this forward on behalf
of the College, working with our legal colleagues, our public
health and primary care colleagues, and paediatricians. Please send
your thoughts back to me about this (you can use the form below),
because I think this is a key issue that we have slightly let slip
off the College agenda.